Hi. I'm a newbie

bethberg12

Hi!
I am on Day 2 of the 21DF and the really challenging part for me is figuring out how to cook family-style dinners for me, my H, and our son...and know what my serving size will be AND what containers it will equal! Can anyone help?

SatiaRenee

@bethberg12 I don't know how to help because I haven't had this problem. And I'm not sure what you mean by "family-style dinners" so I think that's a part of my confusion. I mean, we had company over yesterday and I had no problem figuring out which containers I had eaten. I'd even saved my yellows for a glass of wine with dinner. Maybe if you describe a typical meal that would help. If you can link to a recipe or something . . . I don't know. I'm at a loss.

venuila

Hi! Welcome to this a-ma-zing group!
I am a Mom of two (including a picky toddler!). I don't use the containers but I try to incorporate the foods from the food plan properly into my 1380 calorie diet. I weigh everything on the scale before I cook it, usually create a recipe on here and add all the ingredients individually, cook it - weigh the whole thing when it's done and divide it to find my portion size, and log it that way. It has become second nature to me now.
That might not be the advice you are looking for but you can find something that works - and it will seem tedious at the beginning but it quickly becomes part of your routine and doesn't take a lot of extra time to do.
With the containers, from what I have read I believe your serving size for a family meal would be a green container. So, let's say you make lasagna...you fill a green container with a piece and that would be your serving. You don't count it as a green though. I would divide the number/colour of containers added to the recipe by the number of servings to find out what to count it as.
Don't hold me to that though, as I said I don't use the containers so not 100% sure if that is the proper way just going by what I have read and what I do counting calories.

Katiebear_81

I am fairly new, too. I cook for a family (and sometimes the other people who are over working on our house!), and what I usually do is make deconstructed meals. For example - we had ground beef in tomato sauce with brown rice and spinach with Parmesan cheese. So I made the sauce, measured out my spinach into a bowl, added the rest of the spinach to the sauce, then measured out the rest of what I was eating into my own bowl. Then I put the rest of it together for the family/guys, and that was that.

Also, there are lots of recipes on pinterest, and some of them have container counts, serving sizes, etc.

rumijs

This may have already been said, or worded in a different way. I track how many of each color I'm adding together (actually using the tupperware as measuring devices) and then just divide by whatever I want a serving to be. Say I add 6 greens, 3 reds, 1 blue, 1 purple. Make up the meal and call it 2 servings - each a 3G, 1.5R, 0.5B, 0.5P. If you really want to track exacts, skip the colors and just calorie count doing the same thing (add all calories together and divide by 4 or 5 people).